


isohel

by lunesky



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Angst?, F/M, Fluff, chidi loves eleanor a lot ok, picture a wave, season 4, there is no answer but, when chidi gets his memories back, yeah i'm hurt but so are you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23381059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunesky/pseuds/lunesky
Summary: isohel (noun)- a line on a map connecting points having the same duration of sunshineChidi follows the lines that lead him back to the answer.
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 20
Kudos: 110





	isohel

**Author's Note:**

> i loved the ending to this beautiful show, even though i miss all of the characters. i guess i wrote this as some sort of coping mechanism-- leave it to michael schur to break and mend your heart at the same time.

Chidi doesn’t remember everything chronologically. 

No, he remembers her first.

Blonde hair, gray eyes, sharp words, epiphanies, holding his hand, anticipating his needs. The bend of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the curve of her smile.

He remembers the time she first tells him she loves him, his stomach tying itself into knots and his hands trembling, the threat of eternal torture clawing its way up his body through a fit of shivers. She’s selfish, she wouldn’t ever sacrifice herself, there’s no wayー

But then, quietly, “Hey, I love you man.”

Her chair is pushed backwards, and before he can process it, she confesses, “I don’t belong here.”

Then there’s the time she tells him she wants to stay “in the Good Place because of you. Because I love you.”

Chidi remembers them breathless, whispering sweet nothings into each other’s skin in a bed that is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, surrounded by boring wallpaper and covered in blankets that are both too thin and too warm. 

“I know you have trouble saying how you feelー” 

But he says it back anyways.

He sees them on her gray couch, her nose buried in a philosophy book. Just as he’s about to sneeze, in that _split second_ , she hands him a tissue. And he knows it’s pathetic that all it took was anticipating his needs, but he’s never felt so certain about how he feels before.

Later he sees her changing into unrecognizable people, sees her disappear in front of his eyes and morph into strangers. He doesn’t know where they are, but he knows that if he doesn’t do something she’ll disappear. She’s forgetting who she is because _he_ is too afraid to tell her: in all the reboots, it’s truly him, no one else, that loves her. And when she’s back in his arms, familiar blonde hair and gray eyes and her mouth on his, he sees light.

He remembers the confusion he felt the time when they were four Oreos away from the real Good Place, and she cries after seeing him in a mailman outfit.

“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, and it’s all your fault!”

Chidi kisses her tears away.

But he remembers needing to forget her. Her head on his shoulder, her hand in his hand. He remembers how she cried, remembers rewatching their memories, giggling at the moments when they were disgustingly sweet or when they were painfully oblivious. 

And it’s quiet in his head. There’s pain, excruciating pain, in his heart, but it’s quiet in his head.

Because she’s turned off the garbage disposal and she’s removed the fork gentlyー and she will take care of him, he’s sure of it.

Chidi writes her name on a note and gives it away, and he’s not afraid.

He sees her crying next, in a Hawaiian shirt and bright colors, her smiling crumbling into sobs, hands covering her face. Sobbing, after he tells her that this all feels like torture. Sobbing, and he doesn’t know why she’s doing it, as if it hurts her that he’s hurting. He feels hopeless and useless, desolate and helpless.

He doesn’t understand why this immortal architect feels so much for an anxious ghost of a man like him.

Ah, how he cherishes every time she held his hand, hugged him, fell asleep with her head on his chest, kissed him. Pushing him into the water, dancing with him in the rain, laughing with him over ethics lessons. Every time she tells him she loves him. She is beautiful in every reboot, in every memory. She becomes kinder before his eyes, more selfless, more trusting, more loving. He remembers every time he's thought about her, about the times he has missed her, the times he is angry with her.

Every time she makes the noise in his head finally go quiet until all he can fathom is her. 

After her, everything else followsー Michael, Janet, Jason, Tahani. The Good Place, the Bad Place, the real Good Place, Mindy St. Claire. Philosophy simulations, frozen yogurt, shelves of books, the Time Knifeー everything follows but she is first.

Loving her was natural. Falling in love with her, even for the first time, was eerily familiar. Loving her was difficult, but it was worth it. Loving her was the calm before and after a storm. Her embrace felt like a sunny day, her laughter was a cool breeze by the seaside, her smile was the stillness of the waters next to Jason’s yurt. Loving her was the rush to push a button to kill Janet, the subconscious will in his stomach to choose the purple frozen yogurt, the clumsiness of maneuvering a canoe with a French poetry book in one hand and an oar slipping out of the other. 

Loving her part of _himself,_ and so of course, when he remembers, he remembers _her_ first.

And when he opens his eyes, there she is. 

The lipstick his mother’s lips had tenderly smudged on her left cheek, the light brush of her mother’s thumb to smear it away. She smiles softly as tranquility settles itself into his bones, and he finally knows it’s time. 

The last sunset, their bodies intertwined, the weight of her head on his chest, the last time she says she loves him, the last time he says it back. He presses kisses against the corner of her lips, on her closed eyelids, the curve of her jaw, and the slopes of her knuckles, before he places a calendar softly on his pillow, and leaves.

Like a wave that returns to the ocean, he knows that during his time as a wave, every part of him was meant to crash down on her. And even though he was always afraid of falling, she caught him with her all every time. And he knows that when it’s time to go, she will be okay, because he’s loved her with all he’s got, and she’s loved him backー and for the piece of infinity that they had together, he doesn’t regret a single breath.

There is no answer, but Eleanor is the answer.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If invisible lines lead your way back to me, walk the line.
> 
> title from [isohel](https://youtu.be/asuA2-pbch0) by eden  
> 


End file.
